Open Government Week starts May 12 | Opensource.com

From May 12 - 23, we'll highlight some great people and projects in open government, open data, and civic hacking. We'll also provide resources on how you can get involved yourself. To get you started, we created a resource that starts to answer: "What is open government?"

As people begin to think about and implement the idea of government as a platform, citizens often think about government as a vending machine. In a 2009 essay on Techcrunch, Gov 2.0: It's All About The Platform, Tim O'Reilly said, "Too often, we think of government as a kind of vending machine. We put in our taxes, and get out service: roads, bridges, hospitals, fire brigades, police protection... and when the vending machine doesn't give us what we want, we protest. Our idea of citizen engagement has somehow been reduced to shaking the vending machine."

In the book Citizenville, Gavin Newsom talks about how technology puts power in the hands of the people. Newsom argues that the world is changing too quickly for the government to respond and it's "time to radically rethink the relationship between citizens and government.

When you see the "open govt" image callout on an article, it is part of our collection of stories for Open Government Week. Share your favorites with friends and colleagues using the hashtag #opengov, and check out some of our latest reports on open source in government.

Great read and thanks for sharing a short but articulate read which will help folks get beyond the open gov rhetoric. OK, small plug - Check out www.guelph.ca/opengov, where the City is coproducing an open gov action plan with the community while also field testing prototypes along the way (open data, OST worskshops, civic innovation labe etc.). We would love to hear your thoughts!

Jason Hibbets is a project and community manager in Corporate Marketing at Red Hat where he is the lead administrator, content curator, and community manager for Opensource.com. He has been with Red Hat since 2003 and is the author of, The foundation for an open source city. Prior roles include senior marketing specialist, Red Hat Knowledgebase maintainer, and support engineer. Follow him on Twitter: @

Main menu

The opinions expressed on this website are those of each author, not of the author's employer or of Red Hat.

Opensource.com aspires to publish all content under a Creative Commons license but may not be able to do so in all cases. You are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary permission to reuse any work on this site. Red Hat and the Shadowman logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.